Jupiter Ascending, like most modern blockbusters, is a pastiche—a little bit of The Hero’s Journey, a touch of Star Wars, a lot of the Wachowskis’ own The Matrix. But given its recent box-office dominance, the movie that most came to mind while watching Jupiter Ascending was Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, another space-hopping adventure crammed with colorful lasers, weird aliens, and a plot that moved so fast you couldn’t be bothered to pick apart its holes.

Guardians will surely be seen as the more successful of the two movies, both in box-office performance and in actual quality. But there were more than a few moments where Jupiter seemed to be unconsciously mirroring Guardians (it was originally scheduled for release in July of last summer, before Guardians even opened), and what Jupiter was offering was a bit better. If the Marvel Cinematic Universe is indeed about to spend a lot of time in space, what with Thanos and his floating chair still lurking, then they might be able to learn a thing or two from Jupiter Ascending. Yes, really.

Let your villains have fun—and don’t bury them under eight pounds of makeup.Tom Hiddleston’s Loki remains the Marvel Universe’s single iconic villain, partly because his Shakespearean training and wry smile just made it look so fun to be bad. Meanwhile, the best villains of Guardians of the Galaxy were either smothered under makeup (sorry, Lee Pace) or whisked away after only a brief scene (we still miss you, Benicio del Toro). Compare that to Jupiter’s Eddie Redmayne, who whispers and glowers his way into the Evil Brit hall of fame. And, save whatever he’s doing to make even his lower lip look menacing, he’s got no alien makeup to speak of. When you hire great actors to be your baddies, why not cut them loose?

Don’t be afraid of the inexplicable.
The enormous success of the Marvel Universe has happened partly by opening up comic-book plots to everybody—they may be fantastical, but they’re rooted in real human emotions (Captain America is just a runty kid who wants to serve his country) or our actual society (the Iron Man films intersect nicely with the modern military-industrial complex). Jupiter Ascending, on the other hand, starts in real-world Chicago and almost gleefully gets rid of it, tossing off lines like “Bees are genetically programmed to recognize royalty,” and allowing Channing Tatum to explain that he’s a human-wolf hybrid as casually as he might pick up Mila Kunis and fly off into battle (that is to say, very casually). Jupiter Ascending has too much wild imagination to tear through to hold the hands of skeptics, and that boldness is pretty refreshing after years of Marvel movies that say, essentially, “Yes, this looks nerdy, but bear with us!” Embrace the weird. Embrace the bees. The audience will catch up.

Don’t be afraid of sincerity, either.
Not every Marvel movie is guilty of this—who didn’t shed a tear for Agent Coulson in The Avengers?—but Guardians of the Galaxy in particular seemed afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve, which made the emotional moments in the film’s third act ring a little hollow. Whether or not the broad emotions of Jupiter Ascending actually work, it’s a pleasure to see the Wachowskis swing for them, much in the way their 2012 epic Cloud Atlas sometimes felt like nothing but emotions flying out of the screen. The Marvel movies succeed because they’re ruthlessly engineered to hit the perfect emotional beats, but it wouldn’t be bad to see them lean a little harder into their softer sides sometimes.

Your stars worked hard for those pecs. Show them off.
As consistently as the old Star Trek films would lovingly photograph the Starship Enterprise for a solid minute, the Marvel films always manage to pause and ogle the sculpted bodies of their heroes, sometimes even letting a female character comment on how amazing it is. But why limit yourself to a single shot? Channing Tatum spends an entire action scene in Jupiter Ascending shirtless, and it works even better. It might be viral marketing for Magic Mike XXL . . . or it might just be the future of beefcakes in space.